Gaze in awe upon this fair maiden of the deep! She will mesmerize you with her singing, astonish you with her aquabatics, seduce you with her bewitching wiles!

Just don't get too close to her waters, lest she drag you down to the depths, as she has with many an unfortunate sailor!

ONE DAY ONLY
1 PM this Friday at the Douglas County Fairgrounds.
One show, One chance! Come one, come all!

The following is a page from a publication entitled To the Circus Born: Herman Fuller's Menagerie of Freaks. The identities of neither publisher nor author have been established, and scattered pages have been found inserted into Circus-themed books in libraries across the world. The person or persons behind this dissemination are unknown.

Nixie the Nereid

To the Circus Born

My sisters and I are Mermaids. Not nereids, not sirens, not sea nymphs; Mermaids! Sometime's this Circus's obsession with alliteration just makes me want to -

Sorry, that's been building up for a bit. As I was saying, after my sisters and I left home we decided to head for the Phantom Islands, a Nexus in the Caribbean. Warm waters, lots of fish to eat, and we could sunbathe without worrying about the Essie P hauling us off.

It was never our intention to become a tourist attraction, but apparently, humans go gaga for Mermaids. Small passengers ships started coming out just to go Mermaid spotting. At first, we mostly ignored them and just lived our lives as we normally would; hunting and playing in the water and coming up onto the cayes to warm up, singing or doing our hair to pass the time.

It was pretty stereotypical Mermaid stuff, which I guess is why the crowd loved it so much. They'd applaud and cheer, and sometimes throw us gifts. Just like a certain Disney Princess, my sisters and I had a bit of a fetish for exotic human stuff, so we decided to put on an actual show to try to increase our haul. We developed choreographed aquabatics, harmonized our singing, and even got the ships to put out rings and other props for the act.

At the peak of our popularity, the tour boats offered a Swim-with-the-Mermaids trip. That was kind of fun, getting to meet people up close. I liked the little girls the best, always so amazed to meet a real Mermaid. Unfortunately, that's also how the trouble started.

As you can imagine, with my sisters and I being as utterly breathtaking as we are, men would often flirt with us. Since the water gave us the clear advantage we usually took it in good humour, flirting back and teasing them a little, but one time a guy went just a little too far with Eleve and she pulled him under for a bit, pretending to drown him.

That didn't go over very well. Caused a bit of a panic actually. They stopped having the Swim-with-the-Mermaids sessions after that, and the number of people coming out to see us dropped significantly.

We were devastated. We had really gotten to love the attention and everything that came with it. All we wanted was for things to go back the way they were.

That's when Manny showed up.

I guess we had made more of a splash in the anomalous community then we realized for a scout from Herman Fuller to come and offer us a gig. Manny was willing to give us our own tent - said it used to belong to another attraction called 'The Heart of the Ocean' - and have us as a special attraction. We'd do scheduled performances and in between people would just watch us be Mermaids. We could even talk with them if we wanted too.

We were, at first, not too enthusiastic about the prospect of living in a tank, but then Manny let us take a look at it. The Clowns put it together, so it's bigger on the inside. There's plenty of space to swim, plus we got a reef, a grotto, a place to sunbathe up top, and best of all no sharks.

We all decided that being landlocked was a small price to pay to be stars again. We accepted the Circus's offer, and now crowds ten times as big as the boat tours turn up to watch us perform. I even have an act in the Big Top, and now it's actually good for business when Eleve gets a little rough with her admirers. Best of all, every single day I get to see little girls stare at me in amazement.

That's what the Circus is all about you know, letting people peep through The Veil and know that magic is real. It's an experience that stays with you forever, and I'm proud to be a part of it.